Study finds depression on the doorstep of...

Having symptoms of depression may be tied to developing Alzheimer's disease, a study by Chicago researchers suggests.

The seven-year study by researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago looked at 650 elderly people, all of whom were free of dementia symptoms when they enrolled in the study.

About half the participants had no symptoms of depression at all, and the remainder had one to eight symptoms, but only a small number actually suffered from clinical depression. But the study found that people who had some signs of depression were much more likely to eventually develop Alzheimer's disease.

"According to our results, the people with the largest number of depressive symptoms also had the greatest risk of developing Alzheimer's disease," said Robert S. Wilson, lead author of the study that appeared in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "With each additional symptom, the risk of AD increased by about 20 percent."

Fighting off a botulism attack

Botulism, a paralyzing disease caused by a nerve toxin, usually is associated with tainted food but also is considered a potential biological weapon that could be used by terrorists.

Now university and military scientists say they've developed a treatment to neutralize the toxin.

Treatment for botulism traditionally has been an intensive, difficult ordeal that often requires many weeks of hospitalization. The new anti-toxin, developed by a team led by scientists at the University of California at San Francisco, appears to lend itself to mass production.

"This approach has allowed us to develop a drug consisting of only a few antibodies which neutralizes toxin better than the most potent natural immune response," said Dr. James D. Marks, senior author of a paper describing the discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The procedure could be scaled up to mass produce and stockpile the drug to be used to prevent or treat botulism."